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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28486710">Cabaret</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/bowblade/pseuds/bowblade'>bowblade</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Viper's Kiss [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Overwatch (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 16:13:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,396</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28486710</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/bowblade/pseuds/bowblade</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Amélie meets a stranger at Cabaret Luna, and breaks the rules.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe/Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Viper's Kiss [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2188389</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Cabaret</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>some new year ouihaw for the soul. listen sometimes widowmaker feelings come to you late at night and you just gotta roll with them</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You're like me," she says quietly.</p><p>It's quiet enough to miss, but the stranger doesn't. Instead she tips her liquor glass, swirling its contents, and more notably <i>frowns</i>, disapprovingly.</p><p>"Now what makes you say that, sugar?" she drawls, her accent thick. She knows it's a threat, depending on what her answer is. Her reasoning. But it's <i>hard</i> to say. It's not even that she remembers how it feels. It's fractured. Fleeting. The song perfectly captures what she doesn't have, allows her to reminisce as <i>he</i> comes to mind…</p><p>"You miss someone," Amélie reasons. "As I do."</p><p>She doesn't. She's not capable of <i>missing.</i></p><p>Even if she could, likely those that once knew her would think she forewent that right a long time ago. You don't get to miss a life you took. But there's something in the stranger's eyes – ruby red, stark as fresh blood smeared across willing hands – that reminds her. She can see it plain as sunrise, and she's not sure why.</p><p>She's not sure why she's persisting. It's dangerous to tread here. To watch. To form patterns between herself and others. She can't. She's not supposed to. She <i>shouldn't.</i> Any risk to what she had become would surely be eliminated.</p><p>But she also knows the stranger can handle herself, has fought her way here through sweat and tears. Her mouth curls as she sneers at Amélie's accusation, tipping back liquor in silent agreement. </p><p>"Almost makes me wish I hadn't come over here if you're going to be like <i>that,</i>" she says, smirking.</p><p>Not for the first time Amélie wonders why she did. It had seemed innocent enough. Accidental, sliding into her private booth because she was too drunk and dazed to care that it was already occupied. But even when her companion – the omnic – appeared after too long an absence, she had waved him away, content to remain.</p><p>Amélie was not an infrequent visitor to Cabaret Luna. She attended alone, permissible time away from Talon that no one would care to question, as before she was <i>Widowmaker</i> whose talents laid in death she had been an artist. She might dance no longer, not as she once did, but music calmed her. She always sat here, with a glass of wine that would not so much as make her teeter. She always watched, entranced, perhaps, as the omnic singer understood more of <i>love</i> than she ever would again.</p><p>The stranger that night was new. She had kicked back a chair and placed her boots upon another, her omnic bodyguard sitting alongside her with much more politeness and grace. But there was <i>grace</i> in the woman, too – her starkness. Her confidence. That she would hush people who talked too loudly because she wanted to hear the dame sing.</p><p>And as Luna's set dwindled, Amélie had looked at the stranger longer. Not just her features or the supposed appeal of their sophistication, but her mannerisms. That she was not simply here to listen, but was here to mourn.</p><p>Just as she was.</p><p>It was then she had found her in her booth and no amount of feigned disinterest had dissuaded her away. Even now she hasn't left, despite her words.</p><p>"So?" the stranger asks, more sober than before, if sobriety itself could be willed. She wouldn't know. "Who is it you can't get your mind off of?"</p><p>Amélie looks back to the stage, the flickering lights, the soft piano playing as interlude before Luna's inevitable return. A cycle, just like the seasons. Unbreakable.</p><p>"My husband," she says.</p><p>The woman looks at her, trying to read between the lines. "I take it he's no longer with us."</p><p>It was a polite way to put it. Or perhaps Amélie was so used to everyone around her <i>knowing</i> it was her doing that the lack of coupled accusation was catching her off guard, and she could only nod, silent.</p><p>"Mine's lucky he got away with his hide intact," the stranger curses, and Amélie wonders if she really <i>means</i> that. "It ain't like we <i>ever</i> dated or anything, but he just—you know how people get under your skin? Like you make something for yourself, and you sort of think they're always gonna be there? And you only really get that that meant something when they ain't there anymore and there's that <i>sting</i> of betrayal you can't get out."</p><p>She says a lot of words, not necessarily more than Amélie's used to – Akande could talk for hours if something captured his interest, and Sombra chattered <i>incessantly</i> whilst simultaneously plucking everyone's strings as if she were a harpist – but Amélie doesn't… feel as worn out riddling through the stranger's words and their intent. As though she were putting what she was not capable of feeling into words.</p><p>Only <i>she's</i> the sting, in her case. Amélie sighs, but it's not the token like-exasperation she's used to. It's understanding. Regret.</p><p>"And so you came here," she finishes. "Where Luna says what you cannot."</p><p>"Yeah," the stranger says, smile spreading against the corner of the glass as she downs the last of it. "Something like that. Still, at the very least, he's not as much on my mind anymore."</p><p>She's not supposed to preference, or like things. But taste does not so easily disappear, and there are still things Amélie would chose over others. And that smile chills her. She wants… <i>needs</i> to see it again. She had already thought that, whilst watching her before.</p><p>But she also wouldn't mind the danger, she thinks.</p><p>Which was just as well, seeing as she was still sitting here with a stranger, and had not long excused herself as was what she was supposed to do.</p><p>And she's not supposed to <i>ask,</i> but she does.</p><p>"What do they call you?"</p><p>"Ashe," the woman – Ashe – says immediately, with a flash of teeth in her grin.</p><p>A moniker, like all the rest, but it was not necessarily something to hide behind. No, she took… pride in it. Something she could not fathom. She took her own because she had made it so. Because she did not <i>deserve</i> Amélie. </p><p>She thinks. <i>Ashe.</i> Amélie mentally wanders through boring meetings and names, names that might one day become allies or targets that Talon had links to, be it ties through Overwatch or otherwise. Ashe. <i>Ashe…</i></p><p>Deadlock Gorge and its master, Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe.</p><p><i>Calamity</i> Ashe.</p><p>No image of a face comes to mind. Just a name said, once, and discarded – something about being <i>left</i> as a choice, an option, about jobs unfinished, but a use for them was probably not to be. Too set and decisive, too blinded by former allegiances.</p><p>Maybe she should worry. The woman she's sat with is <i>known.</i> She should get up and <i>leave</i> lest danger come to her.</p><p>Although danger was likely her element. <i>Calamity</i> wasn't a title given to nice, well-behaved girls.</p><p>"And? What of you?" Ashe asks, sliding further into the booth rather than away, as if to answer both those unspoken thoughts.</p><p>She's quiet. </p><p>She can hear Luna singing. Back on stage, coaxing her. Whispering as she watched Ashe blink, breathe, waiting for her answer.</p><p>"Amélie."</p><p>"And do you <i>dance,</i> Miss Amélie?"</p><p>Yes.</p><p>No.</p><p>
  <i>Yes.</i>
</p><p>She's tired.</p><p>It's a different sort of tiredness. Not the sort from hours spent in her web, watching and waiting. Not from listening to pointless blather that does not pertain to her, from being asked questions they already <i>know</i> the answer to. She's not supposed to feel. And it's easier not to think.</p><p>Tonight Amélie feels more like Amélie than she has in a long, <i>long</i> time.</p><p>She looks at her hands. Thinks about red lipstick smeared and hurriedly corrected. Ashe's heart racing within her ribcage. Touch tracing along her jaw, ending at her mouth. About what those things might feel like.</p><p>She wants—</p><p>"Not in a while," she says. "Not one that was not dangerous."</p><p>Ashe hums, and she can hear the sound reverberate along her collarbone. She's riding that high, so close to getting what she wanted from the start – she probably always gets what she wants, eventually. Makes it so. It's not quite patience, but if that's the obstacle, she could. Would. Will.</p><p>Ashe leans her elbow against the tabletop as she holds her arm toward her, fingers curled, inviting. </p><p>"Now I think I can handle that," she says.</p><p>"Yes," says Amélie, taking it. "I know."</p>
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